Jack the Ripper musings
4/9/03 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minervasoloI have a book on Jack the Ripper. Towards the end, it lists something like 40 suspects, and gives them a rating of between 0 and 10 as to how likely it is they were the ripper. The author clearly favours an unknown, presumably an Irish-Cockney local, and it does bias the ratings a bit. A bit? No one gets higher than 2. One polish Jewish hairdresser, an american doctor, and someone else I can't remember.
Sir William Gull, the Queen's physician-in-ordinary, is included in two conspiracy theories (i.e. multiple people were involved in the plot) but it isn't taken into consideration whether he was working alone. He's currently considerd one of the main contenders for being the ripper, almost to the point of certainty in some areas, so this confused me a bit. Until I noticed a single sentence that pretty much does it for that theory: he had a stroke prior to the murders. Considering Victorian medical practices post-stroke it's very unlikely he would have had the speed, dexterity and general mobility required to kill the girls and avoid the police.
The only reason all this came to mind was I ended up watching a program on Sky Travel about 'the darker side of London' because there was nothing else on. The program was convinced it was the polish hairdresser, because some of the police officers at the time believed it was him. Pretty good evidence, all things considered, except the diaries of the officer concerned, in which the hairdresser is implicated, were written long after the event and get many things wrong. The officer admitted this at the time. The guy ended up in a mental asylum, but unprosecuted.
Jack the Ripper always interested me, especially the sheer lunacy of some of the theories, and the complete lack of research some ripperologists do. For example, Gull could have been the ripper, embroiled in a Masonic plot, because they used a carraige to get in and out of the Abyss (as that part of London was then known) and to kill the girls in. Fine and dandy, except no one commented on the presence of a carraige. And they would have, what with it being the Abyss and all and carriages being incredibly rare around there since no one could afford them. Hell, most people couldn't even afford food.
I have a character in a series of vampire books i'm working on who is Jack the Ripper, and I'm trying to find a most likely suspect. There's a lot of unlikely suspects, but none really that likely. Polish hairdresser and American doctor really are the highest on the list. Oh, and Unknown, of course. No matter how certain people claim to be, there's always holes in the case. They overlook evidence, or soical climate, or dates (a few of the aleged rippers were dead at the time the murders took place!), or rely on older theories. A lot of the evidence taken into acocunt by ripperoloigists is based on the work of other ripperologists, and wasn't found at the time (making it hard to confirm and quite possibly made up). No person can prove, concusively, who the ripper was. If he'd raped his victims there'd be DNA evidence, but he didn't. No one found the weapons, and there was almost certianly a copycat ripper operating at the same time, never mind the fake letter writers and people who claimed to be the ripper. It's an impossible task, and I think that's why it appeals to me. ^_^
I'm not a butcher
I'm not a yid
Nor yet a foreign skipper
But I'm your own light-hearted friend
Your truly, Jack the Ripper
(I was supposed to be writing my Personal Statement today. That's why i was doing Jack the Ripper research instead, naturally)
Sir William Gull, the Queen's physician-in-ordinary, is included in two conspiracy theories (i.e. multiple people were involved in the plot) but it isn't taken into consideration whether he was working alone. He's currently considerd one of the main contenders for being the ripper, almost to the point of certainty in some areas, so this confused me a bit. Until I noticed a single sentence that pretty much does it for that theory: he had a stroke prior to the murders. Considering Victorian medical practices post-stroke it's very unlikely he would have had the speed, dexterity and general mobility required to kill the girls and avoid the police.
The only reason all this came to mind was I ended up watching a program on Sky Travel about 'the darker side of London' because there was nothing else on. The program was convinced it was the polish hairdresser, because some of the police officers at the time believed it was him. Pretty good evidence, all things considered, except the diaries of the officer concerned, in which the hairdresser is implicated, were written long after the event and get many things wrong. The officer admitted this at the time. The guy ended up in a mental asylum, but unprosecuted.
Jack the Ripper always interested me, especially the sheer lunacy of some of the theories, and the complete lack of research some ripperologists do. For example, Gull could have been the ripper, embroiled in a Masonic plot, because they used a carraige to get in and out of the Abyss (as that part of London was then known) and to kill the girls in. Fine and dandy, except no one commented on the presence of a carraige. And they would have, what with it being the Abyss and all and carriages being incredibly rare around there since no one could afford them. Hell, most people couldn't even afford food.
I have a character in a series of vampire books i'm working on who is Jack the Ripper, and I'm trying to find a most likely suspect. There's a lot of unlikely suspects, but none really that likely. Polish hairdresser and American doctor really are the highest on the list. Oh, and Unknown, of course. No matter how certain people claim to be, there's always holes in the case. They overlook evidence, or soical climate, or dates (a few of the aleged rippers were dead at the time the murders took place!), or rely on older theories. A lot of the evidence taken into acocunt by ripperoloigists is based on the work of other ripperologists, and wasn't found at the time (making it hard to confirm and quite possibly made up). No person can prove, concusively, who the ripper was. If he'd raped his victims there'd be DNA evidence, but he didn't. No one found the weapons, and there was almost certianly a copycat ripper operating at the same time, never mind the fake letter writers and people who claimed to be the ripper. It's an impossible task, and I think that's why it appeals to me. ^_^
I'm not a butcher
I'm not a yid
Nor yet a foreign skipper
But I'm your own light-hearted friend
Your truly, Jack the Ripper
(I was supposed to be writing my Personal Statement today. That's why i was doing Jack the Ripper research instead, naturally)
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no subject
Date: 4/9/03 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 4/9/03 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 5/9/03 09:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 6/9/03 09:20 am (UTC)Okay, i know waaaay too much about this stuff ^_^
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Date: 4/9/03 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 4/9/03 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 4/9/03 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 4/9/03 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 4/9/03 09:31 pm (UTC)Excellent. Alan Moore ++